Method of cutting jacquard cards



f k Sept. 26, 1933. D. CARMICHAEL 1,927,913

METHOD OF CUTTING JACQUARD CARDS Filed Aug. 15, 1931 2 Sheets-Sheet 1WITNESS: INVENTOR 1 Iluncan Earn 11211521 BY I v. I 4 l r 1 I H13ATTORNEY 2 Shbets'-Sheet 2 Filed Aug. 15, 1931 F 1U... (I o a e 0 o o oo o o 0 o 0 o o o o o oo o o 000 o oo. 0 00000 00 o o o o o 0000 00 o000 00 000 o 000 o o 00 000000 o 000 O o 0 00 O 0 o o 00 000 o o 0800000 0000 o 8 o 0 0 00 o 0 0 00 00 0 00 000 0000 O0 00 O 00 00 O 00 00 O0 000 000000000000 0000 0 000 00 0 000 000 0000000 o 000 0000 wmow oo owo oo o moooow 0 00m 00 o .o 000 w 00 o o o o 00 000000 0 o oo o o 00000000 00 00 0 00 0 00 000 8088 o o 000 ww 00 00000 0 mm m o 000000 000000000 0 00 0 0 o o 8 m oooow omo 0 m ww oo mo 0 00 00 000 00 o oo o oooo 00 000 00 00 000 00 o o 000 00 000 o o w 0800 o 000 000 000000 ow 0000000 0 oo o 000 00 oo oww o o w 0 000 00 oo owo o o ,o o o o O O O00000 mwoo O OO O O O O w 1 m .m 0 Th T N E T E A W m m 3 w w. m n U D.

WITNESS: 2% 7 8/17! Patented Sept. 26, 1933 -METHOD F CUTTING JACQUARDCARDS Duncan Carmichael, Philadelphia, Pa.

Application August 15, 1931. 'Serial No. 557,411

' 4 Claims.

This invention relates to jacquard machines, and particularly to themethod of cutting cards for operating the same.

While in the United States jacquard cards are 5 almost universally cutby piano card stamping machines, there were built about 1891, threeautomatic card cutting machines, operated by a selector or readingdevice associated therewith, and this reading device was intended to becontrolled by a zinc plate or pattern. The zinc plate or pattern could,for a few years, be purchased in London, England, as they had been madeup to accommodate the machines mentioned, but now they must be made toorder.

These zinc plates are perforated throughout their area and are 28 inwidth. They are provided with 12 perforations to the inch in the width,and 14 perforations to the inch in depth. However, even though there are336 perforations in width across the plate, only 324 or 27 effectiveinches of the plate are used as the controlling means for the readingmachine, as the needles of the reading machines are banked in sectionsof 324 needles. I

The outside holes, that is, 6 on each side of the effective 324, areused for advancing the zinc plate in the reading machine, and areexactly the same as the perforations on the edge of a motion picturefilm.

, These zinc plates may be as long as desired in order to accommodatethe motif or design, but several sections are, of course, necessarywhere curtains or other fabrics exceed 27" in width. In the use-of thesezinc plates as controlling means for the reading device of the automaticcard cutting machine, the design or pattern is first laid out on crosssection or check paper. This cross section or check paper is notstandard such as that ordinarily employed, viz: 10x10 to the inch, butmay be of varying combinations, such for instance as, in width, 6, 8,10, 12, 14 and 16, and in depth from 6 up to 36, so that it is notunusual to have a pattern laid out on check paper of, let us say, 10checks wide to 18 checks in depth to the square inch. 1 7

Now, the design on the check paper is the actual size and arrangement ofthe design in the finished article, but the zinc plates are perforatedwith 12 perforations to the inch in width, and 14 perforations to theinch in depth, so that on the zinc plate, the design from the 10x18check paper will cover less than an inch in width and much more than aninch in length. 1 This, however, has no effect upon the actual materialwoven by the jacquard machine, and is sponds in width to the designitself, that asthey merely the method which is used for controlling theautomatic card punchin press to produce the cards for operating thejacquard.

In making up the zinc plate for the design, from any check paper, it wasformerly the custom to complete the design, perforation for check, uponthe zinc plate byleaving certain of the perforations open where the opencheck appeared on the pattern, and closing the perforations forthe-solid work by painting with a composition such as a whiting anddextrin. 1 I

Usually this compound is placed in a tube and the nozzle of the tubepassed over-the holes to be filled, the compound being pressed out sothat it emerges in the same manner as tooth-paste, from the ordinarytube. I

As before mentioned, in these zinc plates, while containing 336perforations, only 321 of the same are effective 12 to' the inch, and asthe article to be woven is often and usually much-wider, the pattern wascarried over onto another or successive plate until the combined zincplates corresponded exactly with the design of the full width as laidout on the check paper. I

It follows, therefor e, that if thepatterns contained 6, 8, l0, 12, 18or any number of repeats, these were all required to be painted uponzinc plates in order to get the full width of the fabric required. Now,since many, and in fact, nearly all of these patterns for lace curtains,tapestries, and the like, are of the repeated ornament class, theobjector repeat appears several times in the Ofcourse, the length of theobjector repeat is I immaterial, because only one full repeat :wasincluded on the zinc plates, but the entire width, down to this point,had to be painted on the sections or plates. I

Let us take, for example, a curtain 60" in width. In that event, if itwere a 12 point'curtain, there would be 720 perforations of zinc platenecessary to accommodate the pattern. I 7

When the word poin is used, it will be understood that this is thenumber of needlesor hooks to the inch in width, that is'to say, thecheck paper having 6 checks to the inch in width'would be for a 6 pointfabric, 12 for a 12 point, 16 for a 16 point, etc. It follows,therefore, that since the zinc plates with the 12 point curtain corre- 1contain only 2'7 effective inches in width, twoand a fraction plateswould be required to complete the'width foroperating the reading devicefor the card cutting machine.

Now, it is possible that this particular fabric had 12 repeats andpossibly even more. I Consequently, it was necessary. to repeat andrepeat the same design time after time on the zinc plate.

Now, if the piano card stamping machine is used, it is always necessaryto paint the complete pattern on the check paper because the card cutteror operator follows along one complete line or width of checks forpunching the cards, and since there are 16 punch holes to the verticalline on the cards, the card cutter always lays out the check paper intowidths of 16 points, drawing lines down through the design.

This is necessary becauseit may be that" the number of checks in widthis not exactly divisible by 16 and, therefore, the number of holes willnot come out even on the card. -This is all a, 17, 0V

work to the average card cutter, and additional explanation is deemedunnecessary.

The object of the present invention is to. pro

7 Another object of the invention is to provide 'a process of cuttingjacquard cards in which,

by far the greatest portion of the labor entailed is entirelyeliminated.

The invention, succinctly stated, consists in taking a design ofrepeats, preparing a check paper covering one repeat, in width andlength, 1

and fromjthat check paper preparing a zinc plate covering the sameportion of design, then using that zinc'plate as a pattern for preparingThe drawings illustrate an embodiment of theinvention and the viewstherein are as follows: Figure 1 is a plan view of a portion of thewidth of a net design,

Figure 2 is a diagrammatic view showing the piecing together of thepaper sheets for operating the selecting or reading machine to operatethe automatic card cutting machine, and I Figure 3' is a view of severalcards laced togethr, the pattern of these cards, however, not

corresponding to the pattern shown in Figure 1. Figure 1 may be said toindicate a portion of a netdesign, or it may indicate the zincplateformerly used for cutting card with the auto matic card cuttingmachine.

In the present method of operating the auto matic card cutting machine,the zinc'plate, or combined zinc plates, are as wide as the design ortextile desired.

The dots in Figure 1 are intended to indicate perforations, and thesheet 6 initially is provided, throughout its entire area, withperforations such as shownatfl. lhe portions 8 indicate the areas inwhich the holes or perforations 7 have been closed by painting the samewith a perforation filling compound, such as whiting and dextrin.

The selector or reading mechanism which is i really a partof theautomatic card cutting machine, controls that machine through the mediumof the zinc plate by reason of the fact that the punch pins on themachine are controlled by the dropping or the means for preventing thedrop ping of needles acting with the zinc plate. This will probably beclear when we consider that the -In my improved process I prepare'a zincplate having a single or a little more than a single repeat of therequired length. The left hand side of thepattern in Figure 1, and up tothe line Y A-A will serve to indicate the width of the Zinc plate.

Of course, for the purpose of making up this foreshcrtened lzinc plate,it is only necessary to make up the check paper design of the samewidth, hence all the balance of the width of the fabric to be woven iseliminated from the check paper and probably the actual painting of thedesign has been cut to onequarter, one-eighth, or even greaterpercentage of time with this method. I

After this zinc plate of shortened width has had the repeat paintedthereon, it is passed through a duplicating machine, which forms no partof this invention, but which is intended to simultaneously cut or punchseveral sheets of strong paper with the same design as-thatfdesign indi-Figure 1 bounded on the cated by the portion of right by the line A--A.-

Referring now to Figure 2, it will be seen how these sheets are thenutilized'for preparing the pattern for controlling the selecting orreading machine.-'- The portion or strip 9 bcundedon'the right by thedotted line 11, indicatesithe the zinc plate initially prepared. 7

Inthe pattern shown in Figure 2, the repeat or motif is repeated five.times 'in' thew-idth' of the pattern. The paper sheets, which ina'yalsobe indicated by the characteristics 9,12, 13, lie

and 15, are then laid together, in matched -relation at the dot-anddash'lines 16, Wlt il'thl1" edges slightly overlappingandthis junctionpoint indicates the continued design of"the entire pattern. 1 e 1 Figure3 indicates the type of cards'which are cut by the automatic cardcuttingmachine, and

as before stated, these particular cards are not the cards of theydesign shown in Figure 1, but are selected at random merely to indicatethe type of card which is produced by this paper pattern cut from thesingle :repeat zinc plate.

Figure 2 illustrates the greatsaving of preparation of the zinc plate bymy methodover the former method, since in this particular instance acheck paper-design and also a plate only one fifth, or slightly morethan one-fifth, of the entire pattern need be prepared and painted forproducing a paper plate which, for all purposes,

. is just as useful in the preparation of the cards 17.

The zinc plates upon which the patterns are initially paintedare washedvand again used after the cards 17 are cut and,,therefore, a muchsmaller' amount of perforated zinc need be carried in stock than by thepresent method.

Another very valuable use of my invention comes in the preparation ofcurtains of different widths, say for instance, 54 inches, 45-inches and36 inches. Under the present. method, ,it' would be necessary to providethree separate zinc plates of those widths for cutting the cards 17.

By my improved method the pattern may be narrowed or widened by merelyomitting or adding a section of the cut paper.

With my improved method it is also only necessary to provide oneornament or object on the draft paper or check sheet, because a zincplate only wide enough to cover that single ornament is to be painted.Therefore, my method will eliminate the services of draftsmen inpreparing repeated ornament on draft paper or check sheets, and at thesame time, eliminate the services of girls or others who are employed topaint the design from this draft paper or check sheet onto the zincplates.

The duplicating machine mentioned in this explanation is not essentialto the invention, and merely consists of punch pins controlled by keys,the punch pins passing through the open holes of the perforated zincplate so that the paper sheets are exact duplicates of the zinc plate.

If, in the particular instance just mentioned,

that is, where a curtain without a border has eight repeats, if it tookthe draftsman 16 hours to paint the entire width of the design, which wewill say is '72", by merely copying 1 repeat of that pattern his workwould occupy approximately 2 hours, and if it took the girl who paintedthe zinc plate 8 hours, her work will now be cut down by this method toapproximately 1 hour. That is a combined time of 3 hours as against 24hours, and since the operation of the duplicating machine is automatic,no time really need be reckoned for that machine.

We, therefore, find that we have the design ready for cutting the cardsin one-eighth of the time formerly employed. But there is a much largersaving than this to be considered, because if another curtain of thesame design and 54" wide were required under the old process, it wouldbe necessary to use 12 hours of the draftsmans time, and 6 hours of thetime of the girl painting the zinc plate, which is 18 hours, whereaswith my invention it is only necessary to omit two of the sections ofpaper which have been punched for operating the reading mechanism tocontrol the punch press for producing the curtains to punch the 54pattern.

Therefore, when the single repeat has been drawn upon the check paper,prepared or painted upon the zinc plate, and the paper sheets punchedtherefrom, the cards for any width of curtain using this design can bemade immediately by merely changing the number of sections of paper onthe reading mechanism.

Ofcourse the representations and illustrations herein are explanatoryonly, and the invention is susceptible of various changes andmodifications in the exact system and method disclosed,

without departing from the invention herein set forth and hereafterclaimed.

The invention is hereby claimed as follows:

1. The herein described process of making jacquard cards from'repeatdesigns comprising the steps of first providing .a perforated plate withone repeat of the design, then using that plate as a pattern, punchingthe required number of sheets of paper from the same pattern, and

then arranging the paper sections so that the repeats are side by sideto form the complete pattern for cutting the cards for the entiredesign.

2. The process of making jacquard cards comprising the steps ofpreparing a perforated plate by closing some of the perforations tocorrespond to one repeat of the required design, then duplicating saidplate in perforated paper sheets, and then operating a selector devicewith a plurality of said sheets corresponding to the full design.

3. The process of making jacquard cards on an automatic card cuttingmachine controlled by a selecting machine, comprising the steps ofpreparing a perforated plate with a single repeat of the design, thenusing theperforated plate as a pattern for'perforating a plurality ofpaper sheets suflicient to carry out the entire de-v sign, and thenusing said paper sheets to control said selecting machine.

4. The processv of making selector 7 control means for an automatic cardcutting machine,

comprising the steps of first preparing a perforated zinc plate with asingle repeat of the desired pattern by filling certain perforations,

and then simultaneously duplicating the remain-- ing perforations ofsaid plate in a plurality of paper sheets. 7

DUNCAN CARMICHAEL.

